Bug Description

The description of the gnome-disk-utility package still says: "palimpsest (from the gnome-disk-utility project) is a tool to manage disk drives and media", but palimpsest has been renamed to gnome-disks (and made much less intuitive, and harder to read because it does things in places like use white text on light grey - is that gnome3 removing features yet again?).

As an aside, the unity dash also doesn't find 'disk utility', only 'disks'.

A solution for me it's downgrade of gnome-disk-utility for the quantal to precise verison, the precise version contains the package with the "original" palimpsest and it works with no problem under quantal .

The newer version is poorly implemented. You hide the options for testing under buttons with pop up menus. Ever wonder why these aren't in have use (pop up menus from button clicks)? It's because they are confusing and non-intuitive. Additionally you should the progress bar for the tests on the window behind the one where the test is done and that window is dimmed. Bright ideas guys.

@Jim: while I totally agree with your assessment, the changes to gnome-disks were implemented by gnome3 upstream, not ubuntu, and so it would be fairer to rant at the gnome-devs in a gnome3 bug report. But good luck with that: I have found they are abruptly dismissive when it comes to criticism, constructive or otherwise. And the new feature-reduced, less-intuitive palimpsest does fit in with the design goals for gnome3.

The new gnome-disk app sucks for building custom systems. One of the most important features of gnome-disk-utility was that it showed to which port a drive was attached. Many motherboards have both SATA II and SATA III ports and attaching drives to the correct port is critical to building fast systems. Apparently the Gnome 3 project is determined to castrate user interfaces by removing critical features. If they wish to simplify them they should at least provide a mode option where all the original functionality is still available.

affected me too. I'm on xubuntu 14.04, installed the utility from Ubuntu Software Manager (USM), it never appeared in Menu. So i tried it from Terminal like it's named in USM ('gnome-disk-utility"), but no success. So i was obliged to search in Synaptic Package Manager (which wasn't installed by default too) where the files are situated. That's a big time waste for nothing. Ubuntu is a good OS but u need to add a little much formality, so end user can see how to launch installed program, even if it's installed from USM!